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28/04/2014

Kill Your Darlings

available to buy now in all formats
written by John Krokidas & Austin Bunn
directed by John Krokidas
based on a true story

This
unusual film is based on a true story about the formative days of what became
known as the Beats, radical young poets who influenced literary culture for
decades. It’s unusual in the sense that director John Krokidas employs a style
that is able to visually interpret the often feverish, drug assisted thought
patterns of an unconventional group of Columbia University students in 1944.
And what a group they are! They include such notables as Allen Ginsberg, Jack
Kerouac and William Burroughs. Yet the fulcrum of the plot is actually the
lesser known Lucien Carr, a manipulative, teasing but indefinably charismatic
sort of personality, the kind we’ve probably all met art some time in our
lives. It is his tune to which the others- consciously or not- dance yet it is
exactly this behaviour which has got him into a tricky situation that will have
ramifications for them all.

Of
course what seemed radical in the 1940s is not necessarily going to shock us
now. This was a time when conformity dominated and those who chose what we
would now call an alternative lifestyle were seen as strange, blasphemous or
worse. So it’s to the film’s credit that what we see- much of which now seem
like fairly standard student japes- is presented very well within the context
of the times. Stray radio broadcast commentary underpins the constant war
situation going on in the background. The film doesn’t judge either scenario
but is impossible from a modern viewpoint not to contrast the two.
The formative poetry we hear is hard work for those viewers (probably most of
us let’s be honest) who struggle matching even the best poetry with even
average prose. Yet you could view this period as the real genesis of what later
became rock and roll; there is certainly something of that spirit here and
wisely the film doesn’t linger too long on verses. The ideas that the Beats produced
as their careers developed later are suggested well enough in blurry sequences
where texts are cut up and pasted on a notice board in a party atmosphere.
The film leans heavily on the performances to convince us and in that respect
scores highly. Daniel Radcliffe has had to work hard to convince us that he can
out run the shadow of a certain wizard and it’s probably no coincidence that we
first see his Allen Ginsberg brushing the kitchen floor with a familiar looking
broom. At a university a long way removed from Hogwarts though Radcliffe
soars higher than he ever did on a Nimbus in what is his best screen role to
date. Avoiding histrionics he pitches the naive intensity of Ginsberg and when
he loosens up you can feel the character’s liberation from his unsettled home
life. His growing infatuation with Lucien Carr is utterly believable partly
because Dane De Haan is so magnetic in the latter role. The two actors are ably
supported by others including an eerie pitch perfect William Burroughs played with
uncanny stillness by Ben Foster and a free thinking Jack Kerouac played by Jack
Huston.

"And you're absolutely sure it's not polyjuice potion?"

We
shouldn’t like Carr because while he is clearly being stalked by the
older David Kammerer who has followed him from one university to the next,
we see in his interaction with others how he seems to deliberately court attention.
His motivations though appear to be simply practical in terms of getting others
to do his essays, help play pranks and spread his free thinking idealism. In
that sense his behaviour is no less unusual than that of scores of students to
this day. Both Kammerer and to a large extent Ginsberg are in love with him but
he is not interested in that. Events inevitably spiral out of control with Carr
ending up imprisoned for Kammerer’s murder only to be subsequently released
courtesy of a law that appears to offer legal support to certain types of
murder. The circumstances are never quite clear as we only have Carr’s account
of it but it seems that he was released and went on to lead a fairly
conventional low key life. However his influence on the subsequent work of
those involved cannot be underestimated. Kill Your Darlings is a strange but
very well played and made film that perfectly encapsulates the rebellious
creativity that can occur in both good and bad ways. Whether or not you like
poetry there is much here for anyone who feels or has ever felt that the rules
did not apply to them.